


Only So Close

by verushka70



Category: due South
Genre: Community: ds_snippets | dsc6dsnippets, Episode Related, Episode: s01e20-21 Victoria's Secret, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-09
Updated: 2009-11-09
Packaged: 2020-07-10 09:04:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19903222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verushka70/pseuds/verushka70
Summary: She addresses their disaster directly; he alludes euphemistically.“Prison,” she says.“No, you were right," he admits. "I owe you.”He basks carefully in her cool sun.





	Only So Close

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [dsc6dsnippets' Challenge 137](https://dsc6dsnippets.dreamwidth.org/346431.html):  
> 

Moth, flame, too cliché; not the right metaphor for the chill between them. Thin ice, more accurately. It strengthens as the evening progresses, increasing equally with his desperate longing to take her in his arms.

The wave within him swells.

But he learned last time. Passion imperils.

Their frantic coupling, after nearly dying, and their slow, reverent lovemaking after that, is now raw material for his infinite fictional variations, protected and cherished (used and misused) privately, at night.

But his desire, his vacillation, the boomerang of his sense of duty, damned her more than she deserved. He apologized endlessly, back then, begged her forgiveness, stoically bore her desperate rage, left after long silence.

That she speaks to him now is a small miracle. Beneath the surface, she seems brittle.

About the only thing he did right, he thinks, was keep her alive.

He remembers frozen fingers in his mouth, losing warmth from his core to save her extremities.

Now he comes only so close, basks carefully in her cool sun.

She addresses their disaster directly; he alludes euphemistically.

“Prison,” she says.

He admits, “No, you were right, I owe you.”

They cook and eat together. They watch television together. He sits beside her, but only so close.

The longer he goes without an apology, the easier it becomes. The easier it gets, the less chance there is that he'll ever hold her again, or once more put his hands in her thick, wild hair.

He closes the window when she shivers.

He walks her to her hotel.

He hopes to walk her to her door. But –

No.

A line drawn; he expected it. It leaves him oddly relieved, and cautiously cheerful.

The wave within never crests. It swells again as he walks home, and subsides.

**Author's Note:**

> [dsc6dsnippets' Challenge 137](https://dsc6dsnippets.dreamwidth.org/346431.html) prompts:  
> * trample  
> * vacillate  
> * thrown  
> * hope  
> * variation  
> * What's real may lie beneath the surface of fact and we have to stretch the truth to reach it.  
> \-- Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge  
>   
> Original Author's Notes:  
> I wondered what Fraser was thinking during his day-long date with Victoria, _before_ she comes back and confronts him. I've also been reading some meta for help in writing a different story, and [](http://china-shop.livejournal.com/profile)[china_shop](http://china-shop.livejournal.com/) [had an interesting (and inspiring) theory about that evening, with which I agree](http://china-shop.livejournal.com/424567.html?thread=7606647#t7606647).


End file.
